E3 2017: Harvest Moon: Light of Hope is About Making a More Intuitive Experience

Harvest Moon has found a lot of success by offering a stress-free experience, filled with relationships and character interactions. This remains true for Harvest Moon: Light of Hope, with the main changes improving the quality of life.

The story starts with your character arriving in a seaside town, around the time their lighthouse loses its light. By interacting with people, completing quests and raising your farm, you’ll quickly become their light of hope.

What makes Harvest Moon: Light of Hope exciting, are the quality of life changes. Instead of having to shuffle between items and find the right tools, the game recognizes what you’re trying to accomplish and just lets you do it. Walking up to a tree lets you cut it down, you can water plants and so forth. Not only does it make for a simpler experience, especially for newcomers, it makes Harvest Moon: Light of Hope better for those who pick up and play.

Since this is a Harvest Moon title, Light of Hope has a town filled with wacky characters. The most notable was a reference to Doctor Brown, from Back to the Future. Along with him, there are a wide array of characters to communicate and help, be it collecting items, repairing the town and things of the like.

Players can also choose to form a relationship with a couple characters, though not of the same sex, with each character having their own personality. Some follow archetypes, like the shy girl, where as others have distinct personalities that you might better identify with.

Harvest Moon: Light of Hope also includes popular features from the past. One of the most fun are candy animals, which are animals that give candy instead of normal food. So candied chickens lay chocolate eggs and candied cows give chocolate milk.

Those considering the Switch version will be delighted to hear it can be played completely by touch commands, though it won’t support motion controls. This might be disappointing, but it also offers a way to play without having to use Joy-Cons on the go.

Currently no release date was revealed for Harvest Moon: Light of Hope, but it certainly has some solid features. With simplified controls and the ability to play via touch, it’s one of the most accessible titles in the series. Expect more information and details, like the dog racing festival, as we get closer to release.

Hey, my name is Grant and I’m the managing editor and main reviewer at Just Push Start. If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past 20+ years, it’s good games come in various shapes and sizes, so I’m always excited to try something new, even if I’m not that good at it. If you like what I do, have any comments or just want to get ahold of me, send a message to Admiralvic.